


Yellow Brick Roads

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Doom Patrol (Comics)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Family Bonding, Gen, Self-Esteem Issues, roadtrip to find the being who sexed superpowers into you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 22:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18353072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Kate wants to find Rebis, the being that gave her superpowers. The problem is that Rebis currently resides with Danny the Street (or Danny the World, depending on who you ask), and you don't find a teleporting street so much as he finds you. Which means it's time for a road trip. Dorothy's really just along for the ride.





	Yellow Brick Roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verboseDescription](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/gifts).



> Angel: Instead of dying in between Doom Patrol vol. 2 and vol. 3, what if Kate and Dorothy just went looking for Danny because Kate wants to find Rebis?
> 
> Me: Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave...

“You’ll be okay without us, won’t you?” Dorothy pressed her hands tightly to either side of Cliff’s face. “Nothing bad will happen?”

“‘Course I’ll be okay.” Cliff stood up and carefully patted her head. Dorothy winces as a few of the joints in his fingers get caught in her hair. They always do, and he never seems to notice because he can’t feel it. She never brings it up because she doesn’t want him to feel bad. “We might get a little lost without our fearless leader, but I’m sure we’ll be able to manage.”

Dorothy took a small step back as Kate came up behind her and rested her hands on her shoulders. “I think I got everything in the car.” She looked at Cliff. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about coming with us…”

He shook his head. “I haven’t. Right now, this… This is where I belong. Until I can figure out where I want to go next.” Awkwardly, he added, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.” Dorothy looked away when Kate stood up on her toes and kissed the warm metal of Cliff’s jaw. “We’ll see you again, Cliff. We’ll see you  _ soon.  _ I promise.”

Cliff made a small creaking sound. “Well, I-” He looked away and accidentally made the closest thing he could to eye contact with Dorothy. “If either of you ever need anything, just call. You know where I am. I mean, uh-you know where we are.”

Dorothy gave him another hug, shoving her face into his middle. Cliff automatically hugged back. “I’ll take lots of pictures of everything to show you when we get back,” she promised, her voice muffled. “And when we find him I’ll make sure to tell Danny that you miss him and I’ll try to bring back one of his flowers.”

“I can’t wait.” Cliff rubbed her tiny shoulder. He really would miss her. He’d miss  _ both  _ of them. Just… Differently, whatever that really meant. Like how he missed Larry-or Rebis, or whatever-and Jane differently. “You two had better go, you don’t want to get stuck in traffic and end up not making it to the hotel by tonight. If you don’t make it, turn around, I don’t want either of you-”

“We’ll be fine, Cliff,” Kate interrupted him. She started ushering Dorothy toward the car. Cerise had helped her get it fixed by one of the local mechanics in town, and now it sparkled like it was new despite being over a decade old and taken apart dozens of times as well as reinforced to carry someone as heavy as Cliff. “We’re both big girls who can take care of ourselves, aren’t we Dorothy?”

Dorothy nodded solemnly and climbed into the passenger seat. She’d been  _ extremely  _ excited when Kate had promised her that she could ride up front back when the trip was still something they were talking about as a hypothetical, not as a concrete plan, and she’d made sure to hold her to that promise long after Kate had forgotten she’d even made it.

“Ready to hit the road?” Kate smiled down at her. She’d never had any young siblings or kids, but she’d always liked them, or at least been  _ good  _ with them. And Dorothy had been through so much even though she was just a little kid and had stayed so sweet regardless that it was hard  _ not  _ to be attached to her. 

A trip around the world searching for a teleporting street and the godlike someone who lived on him (in him?) probably wasn’t the bonding experience most people would have chosen, so it was a good thing neither of them were most people.

* * *

“You can play the music as loud as you want to. This road is practically empty, we’re the only ones here. You don’t have to stop singing just because you’re afraid someone might hear you.”

* * *

Dorothy stood on her toes and craned her head back. “I didn’t know trees could  _ get  _ that big…” She whispered. “That’s even bigger than-than-” She tried to think of an appropriate measurement. “That’s even bigger than our house!”

Kate laughed and offered her a napkin to wipe the ice cream off her face, which Dorothy accepted. They’d stopped to get lunch and Kate had noticed Dorothy watching the families getting ice cream with a longing look on her face, and, well, how could Kate say no? “I forgot you were born in farm country, weren’t you? They’ve got trees like this all around California. Some of them are even bigger than this one.”

“Wow…” She breathed, putting the napkin on the table. “Do you think Cliff would want us to take a picture?”

“I’m sure he’d love to see it. Here, I’ll get the camera out of the car. I’ve got to throw these away anyway. You just wait here.” Kate stood up and threw the wrappers their burgers had come in into the trash. Dorothy could handle herself for a few minutes, couldn’t she? She wasn’t a baby.

Unfortunately, by the time Kate got back with their camera, Dorothy had been surrounded by the children of some of the families she’d been watching earlier. 

Her back was flat up against the tree she’d been admiring before, gripping onto the bark so tightly her knuckles were white. Kate couldn’t tell what they were saying to her, but it wasn’t hard to guess. She had to admire her restraint, though-if Kate had had her powers, she’d have called on her imaginary friends the moment they showed up. She supposed Dorothy was probably too good to sic them on ordinary kids even if they deserved it.

“What’s going on here?” She snapped, pushing her way in between the trio of kids and standing in front of Dorothy, who immediately let go of the tree and clung to her hand. The kids took a step back immediately. They probably weren’t used to people intervening with their bullying. Bullies usually weren’t.

Adults intervening tended to have another side effect, too-it brought the bullying to the attention of other adults. Adults who were the parents of the bullies. Adults who condoned it. (Kate had grown up surrounded by adults like that, ones whose only response when she told them about what they’re shitty kids were up to was to say that she should try acting less  _ strange  _ to see if that changed anything.)

And here came one now. The woman who had bought her kids ice cream, the one Dorothy had been watching. Great. Just great.

“Is that your daughter?” She asked, eyeing Dorothy as she half-hid behind Kate’s back. She probably thought neither of them could hear the saccharine disgust in her voice.

“Sister, actually,” Kate answered in a cold voice. “She’s my little sister.” Turning her back to them, she knelt down. “Are you okay?”

Dorothy nodded, looking at the ground. “Can we leave?”

“Of course, sweetie. Do you want to take a picture for Cliff before we go? I’ve got the camera.” Kate held it out.

She shook her head and pushed the camera back to her. “No, it’s okay. I just want to go.”

“Alright.” Kate offered Dorothy her hand. “Let’s go. These guys aren’t worth our time, anyway.” As much as she would’ve liked to shoot them the finger behind Dorothy’s back, Kate managed to restrain herself, choosing instead to glare at them until they reached the car. 

As soon as Dorothy was safely inside, Kate slipped around to the car the woman and two of the three kids who had been teasing Dorothy were climbing into. She’d stopped a whole flood, once. This would be nothing. She tapped the fuel door and reached down into it, whispering  _ “Coagulate!”  _ and feeling the fuel solidify. Technically, she didn’t need to say the words, but it made everything a whole lot easier.

They were ten minutes away before Dorothy finally got tired of playing with the windows and spoke.

“I hate them,” she snapped. “I  _ hate  _ them. They always-they always pick on me, and I hate it. I could hurt them. I could ask Paddle to hurt them, or the Vegans, or-or anyone. But that would be awful. Even though they tease me, I still don’t want to hurt them. Not anymore. But I don’t know if-” She went quiet and squished her face up against the window. “I don’t know if hating them makes me a bad person anyway.”

“Of course not!” Kate tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I know if Cliff were here he’d probably tell you that you should try not to hate  _ anybody,  _ even the people who’ve hurt you, because it’s a waste of everyone’s time, but that’s a lie and he would know it. Sometimes people are just cruel. And it’s not your fault that they are, and you don’t have to feel bad about wishing they wouldn’t treat you badly. You don’t have to feel bad for hating them.”

It took another three minutes for Dorothy to speak again. “Thank you for standing up for me,” she said quietly, watching Kate out of the corner of her eye. “I liked it when you said you were my sister. I really liked it.”

Kate smiled and reached out to squeeze her knee, not taking her eyes off the road. “Of course. We gotta stick together, right? Even though I know you’re a big girl, I also know it’s nice to have someone looking out for you. You stood up for me, and I’ll always stand up for me.” 

“Mmhmm.” Dorothy went back to watching the hills and trees go by. She imagined there was someone running beside them, trying to keep up with the car but not quite fast enough. “I know you’re looking for Rebis, but I think you’ll really like Danny, when we do find him.”

“I’m sure I will.”

* * *

“Do you think I could be a superhero one day?”

“Of course. You can do whatever you want.”

“Even though my powers are weird?”

“Listen, Dorothy. My powers are weird too, but I still use them to help people. And you know what Cliff said to me, once? He said ‘one thing you don’t ever want to do is underestimate Dorothy Spinner.’ And he was right. You’re gonna do great things one day, Dorothy.”

“He really said that?”

“Mmhmm. He really said that.”

* * *

Dorothy wasn’t entirely sure how men worked. She just knew that sometimes when they were low on gas and didn’t want to dip into the money they’d taken from Caulder and then brought with them, Kate would go up to the people at the stations and wink and smile and the men would always give them a discount. It even worked with food. Dorothy thought it was funny because she always made weird faces whenever the men looked away.

Sometimes, though, there were girls. Women. Dorothy had spent a long time studying women, especially her own mother, and trying to copy them to see if she could get it right. To see if she could just pretend well enough. If she pretended well enough, maybe nobody would notice her face, or her arms, or her  _ anything. _ But they always did.

In Canada, there had been a lot of women. Kate would smile at them, and it always seemed like it was more real than it was with the men. Dorothy tried to copy her, too, but instead of thinking she was beautiful, Kate’s new friends would call her cute-when they weren’t outright disgusted by her.

In Canada, they stayed with one of Kate’s friends. An old one this time. She was a woman with dark brown skin and hair and eyes, who let Dorothy eat candy and watch TV and stay up late all three nights they spent there while Kate did some odd programming jobs to get some more money. Kate’s old friend said that she liked Dorothy and Dorothy could tell that she wasn’t even  _ pretending  _ to.

When they left, Dorothy had asked how they’d known each other, and Kate had smiled and said that she was one of her other sisters, and that they’d been in a circle together (that much Dorothy understood) and that she’d actually dated one of the woman’s cousins, who was also in the circle with them.

That helped her understand, some, why everything seemed to come so much easier to Kate when it came to other women, even if they were strangers. She promised not to tell anybody else about it, not even Dot, which made Kate laugh and hook their pinky fingers together. It was the first time Dorothy had ever made a promise like that with  _ anybody. _

It felt nice. It felt more than nice. It felt like being sisters.

* * *

 

“Kate, how does someone know if they’re a boy or a girl?”

“Geez, that’s a tough one… I don’t know, sweetie. I guess for me I just always felt like something was wrong, and it took me a long time to realize that something was wrong with other people, but not with me. Not really. And that I could do something about it. But some of my friends didn’t realize until they were older. My friend Gayle was thirty when she realized. I don’t know how she knew, but it was different from how I knew. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason, I guess.”

* * *

“...So then I asked him if he’d tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again, and he just looked at me, and suddenly I knew he was about to say that he didn’t know you had to plug anything in in the first place, and-”

“Excuse me?”

Kate paused her story. At some point, a woman had wandered up to them, holding hands with a young girl who may have been her daughter. Dorothy automatically looked away from them, even though she knew that they’d probably already seen her face because of how long they’d been standing there.

The woman blushed and looked down. “I’m sorry. You’re just the only ones here, and… Look, my car broke down, and I don’t know how to fix it or even what’s wrong with it. Do you think you could help me?”

Kate looked her up and down. “...Sure. I don’t know much about cars, either, but I’ll do my best even if it’s not a computer. Come on, Dorothy. I’ll finish my story another time.”

Dorothy ended up sitting on the curb next to the girl (who was in fact the woman’s daughter) while Kate inspected their car, trying to relate it to concepts she knew before finally realizing that something somewhere in the machinery was blocked, which was thankfully something she knew how to fix. Amanda, the daughter, watched Kate with wide eyes the whole time, while her mother hovered at Kate’s shoulder, wringing her hands and repeatedly apologizing for bothering her.

“How did you know you could fix it?” Dorothy asked as they watched Amanda and her mom drive away.

“I didn’t. If there had been any other problem, I would’ve had no idea what to do. Cars don’t click for me the way computers do.” Kate put their non-perishable leftovers into their bag. “But I had to try. Just in case I  _ could _ do something.”

“Oh.” Dorothy watched the road where the other family had disappeared. “Can you finish your story now?”

* * *

“I spy with my little eye, something… Um… Something brown!”

“Is it your hair?”

“No! It’s outside the car. We drove by it already, but there’s other ones outside still.”

“Is it a tree branch?”

“No!”

“Was it a deer?”

“No!” 

* * *

“Kate?” Dorothy swung her legs and looked up at the sky. She’d never really lived in a big city, and had grown up watching the stars out of her bedroom window, but they still made her feel hopeful whenever she saw them, scattered across the sky like diamonds on velvet.

“Yeah?” Kate sat up next to her from where she’d been laying on her back on the hood of their car.

“How did Rebis give you your powers?” All Dorothy knew was that Rebis  _ had  _ done it, and that’s why Kate was looking for hir. All three times Kate had told the story (once to Cliff, once to Dr. Caulder, and once to George and Marion) Dorothy had either been told to leave the room or someone had covered her ears, which wasn’t  _ fair.  _ She wanted to know.

Kate stayed silent for awhile. “Well,” she said, “I guess you’re probably old enough now, aren’t you? It’s kind of a long story… Let’s see… I guess-okay. There’s not a lot of jobs for women like me out there. A lot of us become prostitutes or computer programmers-I did both. But sex work was more reliable when I needed money-you know what sex work is, don’t you?”

Technically, Dorothy did not. She knew what sex was, she wasn’t a  _ baby. _ Josh had given her a book about it once that had made it seem kind of scary. And she knew what work was, so it was probably both of those things together, right? “Uh-huh.”

“Well, one day a couple of years ago I saw this person on the street coming toward me. At first I thought it was one of my sisters, so I went up to them to see if they needed help, because it’s hard when you’re just getting started. But they weren’t-they were a customer, a new one I’d never seen before. Their face was covered in these bandages, and they had these big glasses and this big green coat and tie-”

“Rebis!” Dorothy interrupted, eyes wide.

Kate nodded. “But I didn’t know that was their name then. I didn’t even know they knew you guys until I told Cliff about them and he got all stammer-y and weird. So we had sex, and when we did this… This  _ thing  _ came out of them. Like a ghost. It scared me. When we were done, it went back inside, and instead of money they left me this little blue and yellow nesting doll. It’s in the car-I bring it with me everywhere now.”

“And then you had powers?” Dorothy asked softly.

“I didn’t for awhile. Then-boom! There they were! Coagulate!” Kate mimed an explosion with her hand, and for a moment the beads of moisture in the cool night air solidified around her fingers before dissolving again. “I don’t  _ actually  _ know if that’s how I got these powers. I guess that’s part of the reason why I want to find them. I want to know if they gave me this gift, and if they did it on purpose, and why.”

Dorothy looked up at the sky again. “Are you going to ask Rebis to take your powers away?”

“No, of course not!” Kate gasped. “I love them. It took me awhile to get used to them, but now… Now I love them. They’re a part of me. They let me help people, and they let me help myself. I don’t want them to take them away. I just want to know why they picked me. If they  _ did  _ pick me.”

“I wish I felt that way about my powers,” Dorothy said quietly. “They just made me ugly. And they scare people.”

Kate shook her head. “No, they didn’t. Your imaginary friends helped you, didn’t they? They try to keep you safe. They protect you. They’re beautiful, Dorothy. Just like you.”

Dorothy tried to say something and found that she couldn’t. She drew her knees up to her chest and tucked her chin into them and tried to breathe, the sound of desert bugs all around her underneath the beautiful tapestry of stars.

* * *

“I think Cliff likes you. He’s just too afraid to tell you because he’s got weird emotions and thinks… I don’t know what he thinks.”

“Honey, I  _ know  _ Cliff likes me.”

 

* * *

“Hey there,” Kate said, resting her elbows on the countertop. “I’m Kate and this is Dorothy, and we’re looking for a friend of Dorothy’s named Danny. Have you heard of him?” At the words “a friend of Dorothy’s” she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Dorothy didn’t really understand why, but she smiled anyway.

The man on the other side of the counter at the store shook his head. “No,” he said in a thick French accent. “I do not know anyone with that name. If you are looking for directions, there is a, ah-” He paused for a second, thinking the words over. “‘Danny road’ a few roads that way.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Maybe?”

Dorothy squeezed Kate’s hand excitedly, and Kate felt her own heart leap in her chest. “Thank you so much!”

It wasn’t good for them to get their hopes up. But they’d come to Paris in the first place because Dorothy had said that Danny liked it, and they didn’t have much money left for a plane ticket home, so they’d planned to stay awhile and look for him anyway, and now this man was saying that there was a “Danny Street” nearby, and, well, it was hard not to be excited.

They avoided cars, bicycles, and pedestrians as they made their way down the maze of streets. Dorothy couldn’t help but skip along beside Kate, though she still held onto her hand to make sure the two of them wouldn’t get separated in the bustle of people.

“There!” Dorothy pointed to a street sign that stood out from all the others. Instead of the standard type of the rest of them, this one had big, looping white letters that read  _ Danny Street  _ with an arrow pointing left. “It has to be him, Kate, it just  _ has  _ to be!”

Sure enough, when they rounded the corner, a sprawling street that Kate couldn’t see an end to unwinding before them. It wasn’t as crowded as the rest of Paris, but there were still quite a few people ducking in and out of small shops, all of them with smiles on their faces. She didn’t see how they could’ve missed it. Surely something this big should have been on the local maps they’d been using?

Dorothy laughed loudly beside her, throwing her arms up in the air. “Danny! Kate, I told you, it’s him! Danny, it’s me! It’s Dorothy!”

There was a soft sound from just behind them, and when Kate turns around to look, a large banner has unfurled from the top balcony of one of the windows, the words  _ WELCOME BACK, DOROTHY! WELCOME, DOROTHY’S FRIEND!  _ shining in bright pink letters on a white background.

Kate let go of Dorothy’s hand and let her run ahead, laughing the whole time. Kate wandered down the street after her. It was clear that she felt as much at home here as she did at Rainbow Estates. Kate could see why. Everyone else looked so happy as the went about their business. Strangely enough, she felt like joining them.

Even as she took a picture of the welcoming banner and the gun shop it was attached to, she didn’t feel like an outsider. She felt at peace. Comfortable. Welcomed. Usually, that might have made her suspicious. Sometimes things were too good to be true, especially after you got mixed up with superheroes. Or ex-superheroes. But Dorothy, Cliff, and even Dr. Caulder had all said that Danny was just… Like that. Happy and welcoming.

(“Especially to-you know-people like you,” Cliff had said, making weird motions with his hands that he clearly thought were legible and made sense to  _ anybody  _ who couldn’t read minds.

Kate had blinked, confused. “Like what?”

“You know!” More hand waving that didn’t make sense and that Cliff refused to explain beyond repeating “you know!” with different levels of inflection.)

Kate paused outside a flower shop to wonder who kept all the plants watered and healthy, but before she could ask, the phone in the phone booth beside her started ringing. Without thinking, Kate opened the booth’s door and answered it. It was probably better  _ not  _ to think about things like this, really. “Hello?”

_ “Hello, Ms. Godwin,”  _ a warm voice said on the other end. It felt like getting a hug from a stranger.  _ “This is Danny. Dorothy’s been telling me all about you. She says you’re looking for our friend Rebis, is that right?” _

“I am. Do you know where I can find them?” Kate took a second to adjust to the idea of talking to a sentient street (and world, if Dorothy and Cliff were to be believed). It wasn’t any weirder than the sexually remaindered spirits, at least. About the same level of weirdness as George and Marion. (She still couldn’t believe that Dr. Caulder had no idea about the  _ other  _ thing SRS stood for.)

_ “Of course. Now, it may feel a bit strange, but what you’re going to want to do is…” _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm augustheart on tumblr and I love Kate Godwin so much it hurts.


End file.
